{"id":42623,"date":"2022-01-18T13:23:51","date_gmt":"2022-01-18T20:23:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/court-text-reminders-would-become-automatic-under-proposed-state-law\/"},"modified":"2022-01-18T20:23:51","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T20:23:51","slug":"court-text-reminders-would-become-automatic-under-proposed-state-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/court-text-reminders-would-become-automatic-under-proposed-state-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Court text reminders would become automatic under proposed state law"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The La Plata County Courthouse clock tower.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Nowadays, it\u2019s common to receive an automated text message a few days before the appointment you scheduled weeks or months ago \u2013 and might have completely forgotten about.<\/p>\n

That text might say something like, \u201cHey, you\u2019ve got a dentist appointment next Tuesday at 9 o\u2019clock,\u201d said state Sen. Pete Lee, a Colorado Springs Democrat.<\/p>\n

Forgetting your dentist appointment might leave you with a sternly worded voicemail, a no-show fee or a worsening toothache. But even though failure to appear for a court date can come with much more serious collateral consequences, no-show rates hover around 10% to 30%<\/a> in U.S. criminal courts. So, Lee sponsored a bill three years ago aiming to make those important appointments easier to remember, and he\u2019s now proposing an update to that 2019 legislation.<\/p>\n

Senate Bill 19-36<\/a> \u2013 which also included Sen. John Cooke, a Greeley Republican, along with Reps. Adrienne Benavidez, a Denver Democrat, and Terri Carver, a Republican from Colorado Springs, as lead sponsors \u2013 required the state court administrator to implement a court text reminder program in district, county and municipal courts by July 2020.<\/p>\n

This included at least two texts reminding defendants of all criminal and juvenile court appearances with at least the date, location and time of the court appearance, as well as court contact information. Courts also had to provide notifications of unplanned court closures, such as those for inclement weather.<\/p>\n

\u201cI typically ground bills in best practices and data-driven practices,\u201d Lee said, \u201cand what we know is the main three reasons that people miss court dates is No. 1, they forgot; No. 2, they don\u2019t have transportation; or No. 3, they don\u2019t have child care.\u201d<\/p>\n

But since court reminders were implemented, Lee and his colleagues identified a problem: The program is opt-in only.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you get your ticket, they would say to you, \u2018Would you like to be notified by court text?\u2019 And if you say no, then you\u2019re not,\u201d Lee said. \u201cSo what we\u2019re doing this year is providing that you automatically will get that court text reminder unless you specifically say you don\u2019t want it, so it\u2019s an opt-out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill to do that, Senate Bill 22-18<\/a>, was introduced Wednesday and assigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee.<\/p>\n

Besides Lee, SB-18\u2019s sponsors include Cooke, Benavidez and Rep. Matt Soper, a Delta Republican.<\/p>\n

The bill would require the court text reminder program to provide at least three reminders \u2013 one more than what\u2019s currently provided \u2013 including one reminder the day before the court appearance. For virtual court appearances, the final reminder must include a video conferencing link. The legislation would necessitate that the program send reminders by text messages, but allows for an alternative method if a defendant can\u2019t receive texts.<\/p>\n

County Sheriffs of Colorado, an organization that advocates for law enforcement and public safety personnel, signed on in support of SB-18.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Newsline, visit www.coloradonewsline.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

sponsors hope a simple text message might improve appearance rates<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[133,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-42623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-courts","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42623"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=42623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}